NHS

A Mouse!
In the post-room

Little fellow
Don’t send him up
To endoscopy

Afterlines

After day work call line
On the bus home
She cries
About her boss

And life
Franz Ferdinand
Corporate communications

I tell her to join a union
She has
None of it.

Sin

Not particularly inspired thought:
George as he watched the doorway to the stairs above the room,
Nathaniel as he mopped vomit in the men’s room,
Jacob as he lifted another crate.
Not particularly inspired
And Jesus sat in the corner of the room
Gently opening beer bottles with a pocket razor.

British Genius

Febvre: Nigel Kennedy.
We all want to
Say things about
His aftershave
His afterthoughts.
We thought a man couldn’t have an ‘appearance’
That is: we thought a man could be controlled



So there is a picture of Nigel Kennedy in every home
Now.

Say

That in-the-street library and phone box.

That wet wall on a London day.

That limestone brick and wet dark grass.

Toneless like a telephone or office filled with glass, and leather.

That man, stood there in a room with little more than darkness. Starkness un-availed.

He stood there like a dove, peaceful, in a land where no-one knew his name.

Calm and without people; he went there everyday.

And when fog or glass misted the aperture; he took a deep breath, buttoned his coat, and his heart burned.

4pm it’s very dark and people are scurrying home. The day has ended early – for everyone – there is no rush hour, just aromatic bushes on shepherd’s heath, mock tudor public lavatories, a smell of disinfectant.

Nobody wore raincoat apart from he.

He trod back on a clean pavement, not wet, but imminent with dampness. The door was dark, not in colour, but in tone. It opened swiftly and without a noise. A corridor, full with a sense of damp dust; a paste-like warm effect, an acrid cold reek.

Stairs with carpet so fine it could be wooden boards, but silent. Wind blowing on the panes. Two steps up and one step down. A coat must be placed on a peg.

Up the stairs and into a darkened room, lit quickly by deskplamp – an important friend. There is a typewriter, a telephone, papers, a pipe, a chair, two windows – this could be where Harold Pinter lived but it isn’t.

He sits down with his thoughts alive. Un-ties one shoe, takes off his glasses (for a moment).

‘There isn’t much I wouldn’t say to a telephone with half a glass of brandy.

‘It took, three miles and wind blowing off the Thames. It took it all.

‘So then I – in the bookshop, under new architecture windows saw making photos for myself, in October.

‘I saw the view of London. But all I felt was my youth.

‘I saw Limestone in my self.

‘I routine a day and kiss.’

Closer to the window, an empty street. A phonebox, more darkness and wind. Dark houses and apartments, lit-up by square windows. Equally interesting people place their elbows and watch.

Aldeburgh

As I walked
Along the broken line of pebble stones
It broke; an orange crest of whitéd detail
Like a bone finger carving
Scraped against a rest.



A deep breath under phosphorescent skies.
I had survived this land to find another:
The Coast.

Siriol

Moving at a high velocity
As though my mind was filled with other thoughts
Than you and conversation
On the train from Ipswich
To Liverpool Street.

Two

And two old homos sat at a desk
Old homos of the sort
That didn’t make it out much
Watching 'shows'
At the National Theatre.

Two old homos eating lunch
It’s not a date
Late at night
In a room
It’s two old homos
Not on a date
Not on a date

Two old homos
In the park with a dog
They're brothers
They're twins
They're friends
They're gentleman friends

Two old homos
For all their lives
At school
University
Clubs and dives
They've been two old homos,
All of their lives.

Chivalry

I saw a knight
An order of the garter
Today on a bike
Like a lord
Of the roads
With beard,
A red Honda
And fibre glass aero curve.
A True King.
Real men don’t smile.
Real men shag wome.

'Pidgeons in Transit'

I believe we are in High Wycombe. Beautiful.

Dreams a bloon.
Do you want a bloon?

Breasts.
Big breast
I have never seen.
What do you do with them?
Are they yours?
Do you share them?
Can he..pinch?
Breasts.
I like your breasts.
Breasts
You're breasts
Can I...pinch?

I saw beautiful mounds of earth with grass, I saw formations in brick and stone.
Towering steel serrated spikes, quite motionless mechanical monsters.
I saw them. All.

Your car is shit. Thankfully I don’t own it.
Ownership is man made kind.
Ownership is bliss and torment, entwined.
It gets better or worse everyday.
It exists in terms of numbers and lies.
I am objectless, one day in the future perhaps.

I have never seen such a beautiful thing.
You smell of cheese. and vomit.

There were hills.



We did good things.
When we were young,
on roads

M40

The pylon is naked like my thoughts
And pain I've caused.

I like you naked,
More than with your clothes on.
Original like Adam
or e.,

I MIGHT NEVER SEND A LETTER 'GAIN

In time I will collect
The ashes
Of my face
And the endless photos
Of sheet glass
And naked breasts.

And everyone will say
I loved her.

I time I will take her grace
And like a tall
Glass fill myself
With colourful explosions
And distasteful replicas
Of plastic aeroplane toys,
Marked foliage
Or leaves.

And everyone will say
I was not for her.

Or else I will mark time
And take each changing object
As sandstone

The industry
Of thoughts
Or houses


And everyone will say

I might.

2006

The sun goes down on another year,
Two-thousand and six.
The light is soft, the sky is flat
And now it is raining.

Seaside Yesterday

seaside yesterday
love on the currents
warm mist blue
with beady fire lights
men in tall dark green
and satin on the sea's sheen.

the crashing waves
were music
for the morrocan pipes
and lilting rythms
the haze
of summer nights

coastal like a rock
on a tidal voyage
through twittering
concierge
and sex

Reading of The Mounted Pond

The Crow didst bless the slated fringe
And rest its sooty crest, upon the slant.
And upon its sunken gaze our eyes did dart
Forthwith its pitched surety didst depart.

An obfuscate haze dusted my lips and hand.
One beside himself, sat Eastwards in memoriam.
Paired in pairs, across the oily undulate -
The taloned duck in May-ward quarry set.

My ears the adopted audience of wayward tape
From whence fell into mine pocket open gape.
Dispersed, my senses urged to waxly coalesce,
And shadow out, the prating clamour of excess.

I shared their reading of the mounted pond,
Without glance of name, scripted e'er so fond.
Etched sans breath, the ditty echoes promptly,
Our earthly response fevers outward courtly.

Beside the Heron's crutched twigs and rows
Of silken geese. Amid the dewlets darty
And hopping, not proud but inwards dropping.
His sooty breast so lent clawed & cropping.

With perceptive eye it unfurled - the Crow -
Its poised, knotted digits parleyed sorrow.
Cycles erred trepid, as the wakeful likeness
Emerged my mind to symbiosis - now I know!

The Studio

Peach radiance and fresh gum hue
Quick anxiety doth vanish from you.
And this is it no mock no other:
No shamblesome cliche or hastiful blunder
For here is assertion, authority and flair,
The mission to sow twice the fair share.
Conveyed with profession, whimful and calm,
Portrait of knowledge: eve's mind sooth'd like balm.